


The Tragic Tale of Mikhail Dragunov

by kaasknot



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: (sort of), Crack, Gen, Gun porn, Pining, Unrequited Love, half-assed parallels made between innocent rifles and the destruction of youth in war, outsider pov, winter soldier competence porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 13:40:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4708001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaasknot/pseuds/kaasknot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein the Winter Soldier's most faithful, loving companion is his Dragunov sniper rifle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tragic Tale of Mikhail Dragunov

**Author's Note:**

> (Shh, pretend guns work this way)
> 
> This is in response to a crack pairing I saw posted on a certain person's blog. The parties responsible know who they are. This fic is dedicated to them.

It started in a factory, as all stories do. It started with the forging of Mikhail Dragunov, a weapon who began, as we all do, as one among many. He was made for the strength of the Motherland, to hold back the baying Capitalist dogs; he rested alongside his brothers in a fresh-sawn crate and hungered to prove his worth. He had no delusions of grandeur. He knew he was just a rifle, and one more cog in the machine of glory; and had there not passed a secret requisition through the hallowed halls of the Presidium, perhaps Mikhail would have stayed a humble tool in the hands of his nation's army. But that was not to be his fate.

It was no strange thing, when his crate was separated from its kin in the warehouse and placed in a truck destined for Siberia. The Soviet Army was in many places. Mikhail would be happy to serve wherever he was needed. His heart swelled with pride to think how soon he would fulfill the promise made at his commission. He listened through the muffling straw as the driver and his companion gossiped about "Nastya from Moscow," and "Olga from Arkhangelsk." The smell of the hand-rolled cigarette carefully shared between them was bitter in the close air of the truck. Mikhail did not know where they were going. He stayed silent, and his brothers did the same.

It was a long journey to their new posting. Mikhail grew to understand that the drivers had no knowledge of the contents of their cargo; they spoke often of rations and how the case of vodka should be well-received by the politicos, for all the trouble they had gone to bring it through the checkpoints.

There was no vodka on the truck.

When the lid of their crate was pried open, Mikhail found himself wishing his stock had been polished, and that more attention had been paid to the quality of the finish on his barrel. It had been a long journey over a great many dusty roads, and he was tired and worn from travel. He was ashamed of his slovenly appearance before these blank-faced men. He sat as straight as he could.

"They will do," one of them said. "You may receive your payment in the courtyard." The drivers filed out.

Two comrades in coveralls took either side of the crate; the apparatchik addressed them. "Take them to the armory."

Two deafening cracks rang out from the courtyard. Mikhail steadied his nerves. Those were the voices of two of his kindred, raised in the performance of their duty. What possessed their new masters to kill the drivers? He masked his shiver. It would do him no good to show weakness, not when he had so much he could prove.

He heard a voice behind him as they were carried away. "We will see how he likes these guns, hmm?"

Then was darkness and quiet. Mikhail could not drag the echoes of his fellows' discharge from his mind.

When next he saw light, it was for Mikhail and his brothers to be brought into a long, empty room. The walls were concrete, as was the floor and ceiling; the footsteps of their porters seemed small in the cavernous space.

"Put it down over there," a voice instructed.

They were set down gently but impersonally, and their lid cracked open. Mikhail feared what would come. He waited beside his brothers, and watched the speculative faces of the men as they inspected them. Mikhail felt weighed down beneath a layer of grime and dust. What beauty he had surely was tarnished.

A surge of murmurs rose from the corner of the room. Mikhail strained to see, but it was useless; the lid of the crate barred his view.

"Come, they are waiting for you," a man said, and a face stepped into view.

It was beautiful. Dark hair combed in soft waves back from delicately masculine features. Wide-spaced blue eyes, clear, fair skin, and lips that curved in a soft, pink bow. Mikhail forgot to breathe.

"They are the latest series," the first man spoke. "Comrade Dragunov said this iteration has a superior scope."

The beautiful man said nothing. He did not even acknowledge that he had been spoken to. His attention was wholly fixed on the contents of the crate, and Mikhail felt a curious tingling run through him at the weight of his regard.

"Does the Winter Soldier dislike these weapons?" another man asked silkily. Mikhail decided he did not like these suited men. His hackles rose until his finish gleamed a dull, violent promise. Then the man's words sank in.

_The Winter Soldier._

Mikhail had thought him legend, a ghost story to cow the Americans. But now he was to believe this beautiful, angel-faced man was Russia's deadliest weapon? Mikhail quailed in awe. He was not worthy to be in his presence.

The Winter Soldier paid no attention to the apparatchik, but instead reached into the crate. His hand was fine-boned and strong. Mikhail watched it longingly, but surely there was no chance--until those strong fingers chose, out of all his brothers, Mikhail.

He could not believe it. Surely Ivan, who was marginally larger in the stock, or Vasily, who had rested beneath a twist of straw and had not felt the dust of travel the way the rest of them had; surely they were better choices than Mikhail, who had none of their virtues.

But the Winter Soldier chose him, and held him before his gunmetal eyes while the others looked on. They were a curious blend, Mikhail noticed with the last scrap of his mind not consumed by the Soldier's regard. There were men in white lab coats, and men in tactical gear with no insignia, and the three men wearing suits, who looked upon the scene with benign paternalism. Mikhail put them from his mind and tried his best to focus on the Soldier.

His left arm was metal, Mikhail noted with awe. He gave it a silent good morning, but received no reply. It did not matter. The Winter Soldier's arm surely had better things to do than share small talk with a lowly rifle. Its fingers were cool against his handguard, and the leather glove soft. The Winter Soldier raised Mikhail to his shoulder, and all thought left him.

Time slowed. The Soldier pointed him down the long axis of the room, to a distant, puncture-speckled wall; he rested Mikhail's butt against the broad, steady warmth of his shoulder, and his breath was moist against Mikhail's side. Mikhail stilled himself, unsettled by his reactions, but when the Winter Soldier moved his finger from over the trigger guard--a liberty, but one Mikhail didn't mind permitting--to the trigger itself, Mikhail's heart stopped.

No one had ever touched him so intimately. The Soldier's finger was warm and gentle, and rested lightly over the fragile metal. A tension he could not name coiled up inside Mikhail at the touch, and the Winter Soldier seemed to feel it, too, for he went absolutely still.

Desperately he looked down the range, to where the Soldier aimed him. There was nothing there to distract him, nothing but the scatter of holes in the far wall and the Winter Soldier's eye staring through his scope. He felt laid bare, penetrated by the Soldier's attention. He felt something building, something in the weight of the Soldier's finger on the trigger.

Then the Winter Soldier's finger squeezed.

Mikhail found his climax in a rush of heat. He cried out and thrashed in his grip, but the Winter Soldier steadied him, soothed him back to ease. He felt empty, he felt used. His barrel stung with the lingering scorch of the bullet through his bore.

The Winter Soldier pulled him from his shoulder. Mikhail lay prostrate in his arms, overwhelmed and speechless. He was limp as the Soldier placed him on a nearby table. He set something down beside Mikhail's magazine, and when he saw it, Mikhail wanted nothing more than to disappear in shame. His spent shell gleamed, proclaiming to the room how easily he had given his favors.

He watched in a daze as one by one the Winter Soldier tried all of his brothers. He cooled, and he found himself admiring the spare grace of the Soldier's stance: his planted legs, the ease with which he absorbed the recoil. His metal arm gleamed beneath the lights, and Mikhail felt himself go sick with longing. He wanted to feel that callused, mismatched grip once again, that piercing, penetrating attention going through and beyond him, wanted to feel the explosive release of discharge at the Soldier's hands. Mikhail fell in love, in that bunker room, and he stared at the Winter Soldier with a ache in his heart.

Then, when the Winter Soldier had tried every gun in the crate, he turned and tapped Mikhail's stock. "This one."

It took a moment for the words to settle. The Winter Soldier had chosen him. Him, out of an entire crate of his brothers. Mikhail Dragunov was to be the right hand of the greatest Soldier the Sovetskij Soyuz had ever known. He would cry, if he could. Father Yevgeny would be proud of him.

Not long after this proclamation the Winter Soldier was led away. Mikhail watched him, but he did not look back, not once. Mikhail calmed his racing heart. Around him, his brothers were being returned one by one to the crate; he payed no mind. His future had been laid out, and it was grander than any rifle could have dreamed.

*** 

It was daylight. Mikhail had been pulled from his rack in the Winter Soldier's personal armament locker (he was, he thought to himself smugly, the most fearsome weapon it held) and brought here, back to the firing range. The lights were off, though they were hardly needed--it was morning, and curtains of sunlight spilled through the window slits, illuminating the dust motes that hung in the air. The table was bare but for a gun stand and mainenance supplies. Beneath, Mikhail spied a box filled with ammunition. He clenched tight about his empty magazine well.

His porter seemed oblivious to his distress, which was altogether good, Mikhail decided. He wanted to make the best impression, and facing the mockery of the people around him would help nothing. He let himself be settled onto the stand and read the labels on the jars of anti-corrosive and lubricant. The bore brush rested innocently atop a pile of patches.

Mikhail rested on his stand and waited. The silence was oppressive.

The doors opened with a shriek of protest, and Mikhail turned his attention to the cadre of men that entered. There were five of them, but Mikhail only had eyes for the Winter Soldier, blank-faced and proud where he strode surrounded by his honor guard. They peeled away as he approached the center of the room and the table where Mikhail lay.

The Soldier picked him up, his hands steady and sure. Mikhail reined in his nerves. This would be the day that either the Winter Soldier's expectations were proven, or Mikhail would shame himself and tarnish his bright future.

It was too much. Almost as soon as the Winter Soldier was in position, as soon as his finger so much as touched the trigger, Mikhail went off like a startled hare. Mikhail stared at the tiny hole he had added in the far wall, and resigned himself to a decommission.

To his shock, the Winter Soldier did not throw him down in disgust. Nor did he look angry; instead, he looked thoughtful. He brought Mikhail aside and laid him back on his stand on the table. Mikhail was nearly trembling with nerves. _I am sorry!_ he longed to cry. _Do not be offended at my inexperience!_

The Winter Soldier did not walk away or request a new gun. He ran sure fingers over Mikhail's stock, over the magazine, over the safety and the bolt on his side. Mikhail held his breath, stunned at the intensity of the sensation. Then the Winter Soldier cracked him open, and MIkhail was gone; there was only sweet sensation in his place.

What followed would become one of his most potent memories, for after a brief examination and a swipe with lubricant, the Winter Soldier pieced Mikhail back together and returned to the range. He fired him over and over, in a dozen positions, with a dozen kinds of round. The first few were slow, easing into the feel of each other; then it was a rapid-fire series of shots that left Mikhail weak at the joints. The Winter Soldier fired him until he was hoarse and empty; the click of the firing pin against air his cry of mercy. But the Winter Soldier was devilishly quick at reloading, and before he could think Mikhail was stretched once more around a new magazine, and a new round was filling him. The scrape of miscrosopic grit sent tingles right down through his stock.

The Winter Soldier did not slow, did not fumble. His grip was firm, and it never faltered. He cradled Mikhail with respect. His confidence inspired confidence in Mikhail, and his mechanism felt smooth as silk. He did not jam once. The Winter Soldier rode him right up to the edge of his tolerance, until he could feel his barrel turning red in a flush of superheated metal. The Winter Soldier lowered him. The air was heavy with the memory of Mikhail's voice. The smoke of his tears wreathed the Soldier's head, and he looked like the noble essence of Man stood before him to offer hope. Mikhail loved him. He loved him, he loved him.

Then the Winter Soldier rested the tips of his metal fingers against Mikhail's sensitive barrel, and the sweet chill of them sent shivers through him. He waited for a time, then lifted Mikhail back up. _No... Sir, please, no..._ but the Winter Soldier ignored him, firing another two shots before his metal fingers returned to gauge his temperature. It proceeded like this for hours, the Winter Soldier firing Mikhail until the pleasure edged into pain, and after every shot those delicate touches: his fingertips, the inside of his wrist, the brush of his thumb against the edge of Mikhail's bore.

He held him between shots, still in firing position. Mikhail leaned against the stubbled press of his cheek in heavy-eyed satisfaction. 

Mikhail barely noticed when the Winter Soldier returned him to the table, or when he began field-stripping him. He was floating above himself, stretched out and on edge. All his nerves were open and near the surface, and the Winter Soldier's hands were delicate as they methodically wiped him down. After the furious heat of firing, this was tender and slow. The Winter Soldier had gotten to know Mikhail's action, and now he came to know him from the inside out, one drop of oil at a time, one slick press of his fingers after the other.

Mikhail longed to press up into those hands. Soft patches swiped through his chamber, easing away the residue of charred cordite; a damp cloth wiped the dust from his stock. He fell a little more in love with each gentle sweep of oil that left him slick and gleaming.

Then he felt the cleaning rod slip down the shaft of his barrel. The Winter Soldier was neither fast or slow, slipping the brush in first to scrape loose the char, and then the rod with a patch to pull it out. Mikhail tingled. He couldn't move; all he could do was yield to the wad of cloth shoved into his deepest recesses. It was so tight. It stung, and he would have whimpered when the Winter Soldier pumped the rod, but he was gagged, he was stuffed full and laid bare, and all his filth pulled right out of him.

When the Winter Soldier pieced him back together, lingering with a small screwdriver to reattach the scope, Mikhail felt new-made. Then the Winter Soldier moved toward the door, and it was unfortunate that their time had to end, but Mikhail understood that not even this could last forever. A guard collected him and followed as the Winter Soldier's honor guard escorted him away.

Mikhail wondered at the tension in the guards' manners, but he was warm and relaxed, and sleep beckoned at the edges of his thoughts. When he was restored to the armory, all thought left him.

***

It was a long journey to the drop zone. The Winter Soldier was kept far from the reaching eyes and ears of those who would do him harm; he was too valuable an asset to risk with incaution. Still, the forest they were flying to was in the middle of the Siberian wilderness, far from peeping eyes. It was a training exercise, Mikhail understood; a joint mission for the betterment of the Union. The whir of the rotors overhead thrummed through the heart of Mikhail's stock. The Winter Soldier's honor guard flanked him on either side, and they were nearly as impassive as the Winter Soldier himself.

Many hours passed before the helicoptor dipped toward the earth, and when the Winter Soldier jumped down, forgoing even the gentle landing a rappeling harness might afford, Mikhail saw that the sky beyond had faded into velvet night. He smelled pitch and earth, and the acrid stink of burning flares. The Winter Soldier swung him over his shoulder and led the group to the ring of flares Mikhail could now see.

There were many men waiting. They were recruits, all of them; drawn from the KGB, from the Ground Forces, from wherever they happened to show their worth. They laughed and shoved, smiling sharp smiles and spitting sharp words. They quieted when the Winter Soldier entered the ring of light. Mikhail smiled a sharp smile of his own at their silence.

They were right to fear his commander. He studied their faces and wondered which would die.

The preliminaries were short. Everyone there knew the game: capture-the-flag, with a deadly bent. If these men could not survive a week while being hunted by the Winter Soldier, if they could not protect their badges at the same time, then they were not worth the time and effort to train further.

One slender, small-framed recruit said little, instead watching his compatriots and the Soldier intently. Mikhail watched him in turn. There was little that was threatening about his demeanor, but there was a hint of cunning behind his eyes. Mikhail saw the Winter Soldier size him up as well, and the man broke eye contact. As it should be.

This night, it was the night before the exercise. The Winter Soldier sat beside them and ate the Army rations as they did, and Mikhail could see the surprise in their expressions that he was so young and delicately-featured. But there was a hardness and assurance to his movements that demanded respect. They offered it in spades. Mikhail could smell the mix of determination and fear that wafted off them, and he rested across the Winter Soldier's thighs in silent promise. The conversation was muted. The reality of the recruits' trial was seated before them in black tactical gear.

When sunrise came, the Winter Soldier had already left the encampment. Mikhail lay pressed against his back, as low-profile as he could be made; the only sounds he heard of their passage was the soft huff of his commander's breath and the creak of Mikhail's sling. Around them, silent pines and oaks stood sentinel to their passage, and the gentle drop of dew to the ground struck counterpoint to the morning calls of birds.

Mikhail thought over their briefing.

"They are foolish," their handler had said. He was a fat, well-fed creature. Mikhail had no respect for him. "They think they can use us to their ends. Bah! We will crush them." He had sucked on his teeth for a long moment, eyeing the Winter Soldier. He reeked of cigar smoke.

"It is our exercise, no? Then, my mishka, we will make them earn it."

They called the Winter Soldier "the bear." Mikhail didn't know why. "Wolf" seemed more accurate, if a name was required.

The orders had been explicit. They were to track the recruits and eliminate them. They would be unsupervised, but a homing beacon would be sewn into the Winter Soldier's uniform, and if they did not meet the rendezvous at the appointed time then a team would be sent to extract them.

They were not to kill more than one recruit per day. "Some survivors are necessary," the handler had said. "But scare them. Make them cry for their mothers."

The Winter Soldier had said nothing to this. Mikhail took his cue from his commander's blank expression and hid his own distaste. This man was a bureaucrat, not a soldier. He had no business giving orders.

Around them the forest lightened with the first hints of dawn. The recruits would be waking, soon. They would see the empty space where the Winter Soldier had lain, and they would know fear. Mikhail scented the air, taking in the smells of damp earth and pitch. They would know they were waiting, his commander and he, and that death would come quickly with a single wrong step.

The Winter Soldier ran. Ahead, there was an escarpment barely visible above the edge of the trees. It was not ideal; it was too obvious a choice for a sniper's nest. Yet the Winter Soldier had a point to make, and it would be best made from a distance, while the recruits were still foggy with sleep. He took a running jump up the exposed granite, clinging like a gecko to the vertical face. His metal fingers etched into the stone; Mikhail felt the vibrations through the Winter Soldier's shoulder. Hand over hand he climbed, seeking handholds and making them when there were none, until he hauled himself over the crest and settled in a crouch.

It was a good vantage. Five miles at least of visible terrain, before the foothills rose and blocked sightlines. Mist had settled in the low valleys, and a light morning breeze shredded the tops of the banks into trailing streamers of white. A good vantage, but a poor day for shooting.

The Winter Soldier pulled out a battered compass and shrugged Mikhail over his shoulder. Mikhail perked up in anticipation. The Winter Soldier laid them out flat across the ground, propping up his metal arm and resting Mikhail across it. Mikhail peered down at the flexing plates in interest. It seemed as though they were locking together, creating a rigid stand upon which Mikhail could sit. It was beautiful in its economy. Mikhail had dreaded the need of a bipod--such a device would surely scratch his finish over time, and while Mikhail preferred not to think of himself as vain, it was unavoidable with so pristine a user as the Winter Soldier. He had an image to protect.

But the Winter Soldier's arm was gentle the way a bipod is not, and what's more, the bare scrape of steel against steel (or whatever alloy it was that left his commander's sheen so perfect after such hard use as it had seen climbing the cliff face) was altogether avoided by the clever glove the Soldier wore. His metal palm would never slip on Mikhail's guard, and his fingers would remain free to climb and maim. Mikhail settled himself with a contented huff.

The sun rose. The wind picked up, tossing the remnants of last fall's leaves through the air, then faded, settling into the damp chill of a Russian spring. The Winter Soldier consulted his compass, then scratched equations in the dirt beside them. Mikhail watched, curious, but there seemed as many symbols as there were numbers, and the Soldier scratched them so haphazardly he could not follow. It was clearly a well-worn task, one he knew intimately. He seemed to be testing himself: he would set Mikhail's sights, lock on a point by dead reckoning, then check his calculations. Almost invariably he was satisfied with what he found, though how Mikhail knew he could not tell; his commander was not an expressive man. The Winter Soldier brushed his slate clean and settled in to wait.

It was not long. The Winter Soldier had trained Mikhail's scope upon their erstwhile campsite, where nine bodies still lay in their bedrolls. Mikhail stared in confusion, for he had been certain the night before there had been ten. The Winter Soldier seemed unperturbed, and waited and watched with steady, even breaths. His awareness was vast, his focus as fine as a magnifying glass above an ant. Mikhail shivered. Such attention was a living thing flowing through him, and he could do nothing but let himself respond.

One by one the recruits stirred, rising as the shadows of the trees could no longer shield against the brightening sky, and Mikhail smiled at their dismay to see the fabled Winter Soldier missing from their number. _Fools_ , Mikhail thought. It was a ready man who could catch his commander on the draw, and these were not he. The Winter Soldier's finger lay over the trigger.

Mikhail stared at the nine panicking men, breathless. He watched them snatch up their gear, but all his focus rested on the Winter Soldier's finger as it squeezed in microscopic increments, winding him higher and higher until he sat right at the sweet spot--the sharp edge of no return. Mikhail sat half-insane with need, but the Winter Soldier was an expert. He could keep him there all day if he had to.

It felt like he did. Mikhail hovered in a space between, hung on the promise of release and the calm assurance of the Winter Soldier's hands, and time lost all meaning.

Until the stars aligned and the Winter Soldier squeezed him right over the edge. The bellow of his own voice surprised him, and the perfection of the shot sent triumph through him. He ached with pride, ached with happiness so profound he could not find the words. He was a rifle, built with one purpose, and in the Winter Soldier's hands the promise of his making found fruition. He watched, nearly in tears, as a hapless recruit's head explode in red mist.

It was a beautiful shot.

They stayed there for a moment, watching the recruits' shock and horror. A paltry few tracked the trajectory of the shot, snatching their gear and positioning themselves behind their more foolish peers. One marked the distant crack of Mikhail's retort. Mikhail made a note of that one; he alone of the recruits vanished into the scant protection of the trees. The rest lingered a moment longer, dithering beneath their confusion. Mikhail scowled. Were they not soldiers? Did they not have training? Snipers were not uncommon, no matter how fabled they were; these men were not raw to warfare, merely to the demands of the Red Room. It was good they were being picked off in this way.

Mikhail marked how they scattered, which paths they took. The Winter Soldier swung the scope in lazy, smooth arcs, and more than once a head fell between his crosshairs, but he made no further shots. He had reached the day's quota. His job now was far more psychological. Instead, he shot the rifle from one target's hands; another, he shot the tree by his head, showering splinters over his shoulders. In each case the message was clear: _I could have shot you. Do better._

This done, the Winter Soldier moved quickly. His arm released in a clatter of shifting plates, Mikhail was returned to his perch over his shoulder, and then he was running, his spent shells caught between his fingers. The board was set, and he had made his first move. It was time to find the recruits before they pinned him down against a cliff.

The wind blew cold against Mikhail's heated barrel, and the warmth of the Winter Soldier's shoulder grounded him. He let himself drift.

It proved to be a long week. The Winter Soldier carried rations sufficient for the duration, as did all the recruits; he carried water and a kit for cleaning his weapons. He carried nothing else. The remainder of the first day he spent tracking his prey, shadowing their footsteps to get an idea of their habits. Mikhail watched in awe at the speed of his reflexes. More than once a recruit spooked and spun around, their fingers full on the trigger and fire-readiness in their eyes, but not once did they see their hunter.

The Winter Soldier was a ghost. He was a wisp of mist through the trees, and Mikhail was his only witness. He gazed up at the Winter Soldier's distrait face and felt expansive and light as propellant gas.

The next death came in the evening of the second day. The Winter Soldier had taken Mikhail and the rest of his guns out for cleaning. He was lingering over his Colt M1911, running his fingers over the worn handgrip, and Mikhail stewed over his shoulder as he watched. It wasn't even a _nice_ gun. It was blocky and utilitarian, with none of the sleek grace of Mikhail himself. And yet his commander seemed transfixed by it, tracing the edge of the slide and holding it in an odd, reversed hold--his hand over the barrel, rather than the grip.

He moved so fast Mikhail could barely follow. The Winter Soldier was still, crouched behind a rock with a wrinkle in his brow, and then he was a fury of motion, flipping the gun and shooting the recruit that was attempting to creep up on him. He stood, his arm outstretched, ready to fire again, but the man was dead, a neat little hole carved between his brows. The Winter Soldier lowered the gun and walked toward him, and his face crumpled in confusion. He looked around, as though searching for someone; Mikhail looked, too, but there was no one. It was a solitary mission.

The Winter Soldier holstered the Colt and bent to activate the badge on the dead recruit's tac vest. They were gone a moment later, vanishing into the night.

The third day, it rained. The Winter Soldier spent a token time on patrol, enough at least to distance himself from his previous position, before he located a sufficiently large tree and settled in a crotch between two branches. He huddled in a pitiful, sodden mess. Mikhail, a condom carefully rolled and tied in place over his muzzle and barrel vents, was more sanguine. He had never felt rain before. He watched it come down beyond the leafy canopy. The Winter Soldier's canteen stood upon on the branch before them, collecting rainwater.

At one point the wind gusted, and a wash of rain spilled loose from the leaves onto the Winter Soldier's head. He cursed, long and fluently, his voice tightened from the chill. Mikhail's delight fled. He could not understand the words. They were in a language other than Russian, a language with broad vowels and soft consonants. The Winter Soldier did not seem to notice. Mikhail watched him closely. He had bundled himself in his poncho, and his glare was petulant beneath the wet hair slicked in his face. He said nothing more in that language, and eventually by nightfall the rain had faded into a tickling mist.

They killed no one that day.

The killed no one the next day, either. The Winter Soldier was circling the grid perimeter, keeping to high ground and leaving no trace that Mikhail could see--though Mikhail admitted he was hardly skilled at tracking--when a gunshot tore through the forested calm. Mikhail went to alert. The Winter Soldier spun to a crouch, scanning the trees. No one was there. The shot was a mile distant, at least. The Winter Soldier broke into a run, cutting through bracken and copse without a care for his trail. Mikhail clung to his shoulder, eyeing the branches that swung low past his barrel, but his commander kept him safe.

They found the man slumped against a rockfall, his face obliterated from the exit wound of a bullet to the back of the head. He had been stripped of his food and useful supplies. The Winter Soldier activated the homing badge and examined the spoor of his killer.

He was dead by mid-afternoon the next day. The Winter Soldier activated his beacon and slit his nose with his knife in warning. Mikhail understood. Russia could not trust traitors, and this man had shot his comrade in the back. It was good he had died.

The morning of the sixth day dawned red and muggy. Clouds hovered, but they were pale and dry, and the air smelled of wood, not water. The Winter Soldier had cut to the far side of the drop zone during the night; a stream cut through this quadrant of the field, and the Winter Soldier slung Mikhail off his shoulder. The stream bed was small, little more than a trickle of water over a bed of mossy rocks, but the thicket of reeds that had grown up around it was formidable. The Winter Soldier crept through them, Mikhail at the ready. This was exposed ground. Mikhail listened to the trickle of water and the brush of the wind through the rushes, and the longer he listened the more they turned to soft laughter and whispers. He barely felt the finger on the trigger, so acute was his awareness. The Winter Soldier's steps were smooth and even, settled in a quick-moving crouch. He parted the reeds with no more sound than the wind.

Closer to the water, the earth softened. Mikhail heard the Winter Soldier hiss, felt the aberrant hitch in his step as he paused. Mikhail looked behind them and saw his footprints as clear as a signpost in the mud, proclaiming he had been there. Anyone who came past this way would know they had been there. There was nothing for it. His commander needed water, and this was the closest water short of the rendezvous, which may as well have been as far away as the moon. The Winter Soldier pressed on, and crouched beside the stream bed. Rocks shifted beneath his boots; Mikhail held his breath as he compensated for the slip. 

It was a delicate maneuver. The Winter Soldier kept Mikhail firm in his grip, bracing his stock against his upper arm, and lowered his free hand to his canteen. Mikhail kept watch over him. The glug of water against the rim was barely audible over the stream's laughter. The sooner they could be done with this, the better. Mikhail didn't begruge his commander his body's needs, anymore than the Winter Soldier begrudged his own; but this was a risk, and Mikhail didn't like it.

The sound of metal screwing into metal was sweet in the tense air. Mikhail looked down, but the Winter Soldier had already stowed the canteen, and then the world swung wildly as he brought Mikhail back to a two-handed grip. They left the riverbank as quietly as they had come.

The Winter Soldier did take a moment to scrape his muddy boots on a tree. His face was a picture of bemused disgust; it was so unlike his usual blank glower that Mikhail couldn't look away. He seemed younger, somehow.

It was the glint of sunlight off a barrel that caught Mikhail's attention. He tried to shout, but the Winter Soldier couldn't hear him; instead, he watched in dismay as the gunman, settled in a tree barely five paces away, raised his rifle. The Winter Soldier was scanning the trees, but he wasn't looking up; Mikhail was going to watch him die.

A squirrel saved him. A lowly red squirrel, chittering at the intruder in its tree. The Winter Soldier spun, knife in hand, and flung it in the direction of the chittering. Mikhail heard a muffled grunt, and then a body fell from the branches with a knife-handle protruding from its throat. He stared in shock, but the Winter Soldier was already turning. Two more men burst from the trees. The Winter Soldier deflected fire from the AK with his arm, sending the bullets back to their owner; he reached for his Colt, but the remaining recruit scored a line across the Winter Soldier's thigh, tearing off the holster. Mikhail watched in stunned awe as his commander charged his foe, disregarding completely the blood soaking his trousers, and snapped his neck in one quick twist. The sudden silence bore the hush of fear.

Mikhail found himself easing, now that the danger had passed. The Winter Soldier was not dead; three reckless recruits were, instead. All was well.

The seventh day was the longest. Mikhail did not require sleep, but the Winter Soldier, no matter how formidable a soldier he was, had been subsisting of half-hour catnaps. He was starting to waver. Mikhail watched the circles under his eyes settle into bruised shadows, and his eyes when he peered through his scope were bloodshot and red. His lashes brushed against Mikhail's scope and he gave a small sigh. The remaining recruits were faring little better; it was hardly an effort now, to find them. Mikhail wondered if his commander would kill another before the exercise ended.

He did not. Night fell, and the Winter Soldier prowled through the undergrowth to keep himself awake. He followed a faint line of spoor--Mikhail could see nothing, but periodically his commander stopped to unearth a snapped twig, or the impression of a boot where Mikhail would swear had been nothing but soft moss. There was an air of tension about the Winter Soldier. He followed the trail without difficulty, and after a week of observing his handiwork Mikhail was sure he could have kept a much faster pace. But his eyes were dark when he looked up to gauge the position of the moon, and there was a pain in his expression Mikhail could not identify.

They found the source of the trail before the moon had reached its apogee. The Winter Soldier paused on the edge of a small clearing, tucked up in the lee of the cliffs. He froze, and his eyes shone from the black paint on his face with a glitter of triumph. He melted back into the trees. Mikhail waited with bated breath as he made a slow circle through the thicket, making no more noise than the wild creatures that slipped to and fro. He drew a careful line toward the edge of bare rock rising to crest from the trees a fifty meters above. He blended in with the shadows. He squatted beside a tangle of undergrowth, drew a knife, and slowly lifted a creeper from the stone.

Mikhail stared down at the man lying huddled beneath the greenery, and the man in turn stared back up at them, his mouth set in a firm line. It was the tenth man, Mikhail suddenly recalled; the small, clever one who had been missing from the campsite the first morning a week previous. They had seen neither hide nor hair of him since the night beside the bonfire, and now here he was: buried beneath a fall of greenery--plainly man-made and cut, now that Mikhail looked--and staring up at the Winter Soldier with fatalism in his gaze.

The Winter Soldier examined him silently, his head tilted just to the side, before he let the vine settle back against the stone, obscuring the recruit from sight. He backed away from the hide and back into the night.

Mikhail looked back until the trees hid the cliff-face, until there was nothing to see. He did not understand.

***

Dawn saw the end of the exercise. Mikhail watched the ragged survivors gather at the rendezvous from his perch over the Winter Soldier's shoulder. They were exhausted, all of them; dark circles traced beneath their eyes, and they wavered on their feet, their hands clenching spasmodically around their weapons at the slightest noise from the trees. Mikhail marked the slender recruit when he broke cover, his cheeks gaunt from sleep-deprivation.

The distant roar of incoming rotors cut out whatever conversation might have arisen, and as one they turned to watch as the Mi-8 crested the horizon. Mikhail felt the Winter Soldier tense beneath him, but he held his position in the tree overlooking the drop zone.

The helo touched down in the middle of the field; the Winter Soldier launched himself from the tree into the midst of the recruits, coiling up to his full height with their eyes focused on him. He paid them no mind, but was the first to move toward the helicopter. The rest followed behind like ducklings in their mother's wake.

The return was uneventful. The Winter Soldier refused to sleep, and Mikhail saw the recruits give him harrowed glances and prop themselves awake. Mikhail gave a mental shrug. If they could not recognize when an exercise had ended, it was not his concern. The pilots flew map-of-the-earth, and Mikhail stared entranced through the open bay door at the undulating sea of trees. The Winter Soldier's breathing was slow and regular. Mikhail drifted.

When they reached the compound the Winter Soldier tensed. Gone was his easy vigilance, replaced by a focused stare. Mikhail felt the muscles in his back clench. He breathing picked up. Mihkail traced his gaze, and saw a highly polished, understated car parked inside the sally port of the compound. They touched down in the open field beyond the walls, where a squadron of guards stood waiting. The recruits tumbled out with the desperate eagerness of puppies, but the Winter Soldier hesitated. Mikhail had known him for barely a week, and not once had he hesitated--until now. Mikhail tried to catch a glimpse of his face, but all he could see was the curve of his cheek, and the stubbled clench of his jaw. He dropped from the helo and ducked under to rotating blades. The pilots lifted away, and the guards moved in.

They escorted the Winter Soldier toward the gates of the compound. Mikhail watched as his commander's face drew in and lines of tension cut around his mouth. What was wrong? Who had come in that car, to send his commander into such a state? Mikhail girded himself, and let the sun glint off his barrel threateningly. The courtyard was bare but for the polished black car. Their boots rang out over bare concrete as the Winter Soldier carried Mikhail inside, surrounded by armed guards.

Inside it was a man--short, stout, with gaunt, sickly cheeks and round, polished glasses--who came to greet them. Over his shoulder there was a blank window overlooking a darkened observation room; it was the only reason Mikhail saw the Winter Soldier's stricken, fearful expression. A chill ran right down to Mikhail's stock. He shook with his commander's suppressed shivering.

"Sergeant Barnes," the man said, and a full shudder rocked through the Winter Soldier's body. Mikhail stared dumbfounded at this tiny, unassuming man, who had named the Winter Soldier and reduced to him to wordless fear. "I trust you performed satisfactorily." He spoke with a distinct German accent; Mikhail recoiled in shock.

"Seven dead," the Winter Soldier replied, his voice small and thready. "Six by my hand."

Comrade Andreyev stood at this. "Six of our finest recruits?"

"It is for the cause, Comrade," the little man said over his shoulder. He shifted his weight, and Mikhail could see the oxygen cannister propped upright behind his leg. "HYDRA cannot survive if we trust to weakness." He turned back to the Winter Soldier, his smile full of pride. "Our fist will cull the first sign of weakness, and we will rise all the stronger."

"As you will, Doctor. But six. The disappearances of the Motherland's greatest promise will not go unnoticed indefinitely."

The doctor waved a dismissive hand. "I have measures in place to remedy such an event. Never fear, Comrade Andreyev, HYDRA will not be so easily removed, this time."

Andreyev gave him a sour look behind his back, and glared at the Winter Soldier. "You Germans. Your obsession with your trinkets and super-soldiers did not win you the war."

"No, your winter saw to that," the tiny doctor snapped. He turned back to the Winter Soldier. "HYDRA shall have all three." He laid a liver-spotted hand against the Winter Soldier's metal arm, and Mikhail felt his commander tense.

"Comrade Andreyev, Doctor Zola, the asset requires maintenance," one of the techs said, lurking in the back by the doors to the lab. He wrung his hands, and flinched at Andreyev's huff of frustration.

"I have your permission for tomorrow evening's requisition?" he asked.

"Yes, yes," the doctor, Zola, said. "The paperwork has been filed, the risks are minimal."

"You have reviewed the dosage?"

Zola's expression was withering. Andreyev nodded. He said nothing, but there were volumes communicated beneath their expressions, and Mikhail gave up trying to parse them. Zola was displeased and Andreyev unrepentant--that is all he understood. Further conversation was not for their ears, as Zola signaled the techs forward, and they swept the Winter Soldier into the armory. He went gently as a kitten.

The Winter Soldier was deactivated and disarmed. He placed Mikhail on the table they presented him, and alongside went his knives, his razors, his garrotes and darts, his poison vials, his guns. The techs stripped the armor from him and set it aside for cleaning; he seemed both more powerful and smaller without its protection. Mikhail stared. The bleakness in the Winter Soldier's expression made no sense to him as he watched him led naked away into another room. There was a pause, then a sharp "Stand still" and the high-powered hiss of water cutting through the air. Mikhail heard a soft yelp, then nothing, just the slap of the water against concrete and flesh. "Turn around!" he heard, and the quality of the spray changed once more.

Mikhail peered anxiously around the guards when the water cut off. His commander was led out moments later. He walked easily, dripping water behind him; his flesh was covered in gooseflesh, his nipples taut, his genitals strangely shrunken. His skin was lashed pink. Mikhail looked up at him, but the Winter Soldier paid him no attention. His guards bustled him from the room, with nothing but his wet footprints to leave behind. Mikhail stared at the door for a long time. The techs cleaned the other weapons, and the Winter Soldier's armor. They cleaned Mikhail as well, and returned him to the armory.

He did not see the Winter Soldier for three days, and when he returned, his eyes sat deeper in his face than before.

***

They were deployed together a handful of times over the next five years. Sometimes it was for training exercises, sometimes it was for long-range targets, sometimes it was to show off the might of Russia to those who didn't show her the proper respect. Mikhail fancied each new op brought him and the Winter Soldier closer together, fused them more and more into one, inseparable fighting force.

He lay cradled in the Winter Soldier's arms as he slept in a cocoon of snow, a sudden blizzard throwing their mission awry. It was a quiet night of soft breathing and the radiated warmth of his commander's body. It was Mikhail's most cherished memory.

He rested in the armory between ops and listened to the gossip of the other guns. The Skorpion was starting to put on airs. The tiny, single-shot Derringer was ugly and silent. The knives were chatterboxes all, talking over each other and finishing each other's sentences until all was lost in a torrent of babble. They had many stories to tell; the Winter Soldier used them often. Mikhail, knew, however, that he was the Winter Soldier's favored weapon. Not even the knives, so hard-used, were so carefully tended as he was.

Perhaps he was proud. It was understandable, surely.

***

Mikhail's death came at the end of winter, when the ice began to recede up the rooftops. A group of smugglers had been unearthed, tainting the purity of the Union by slipping Western contraband music into Russia. The Winter Soldier was sent to eliminate the cell.

Intelligence told them it was a small cell, poorly armed. The Winter Soldier took minimal arms, just those suitable for confronting minor opposition at a distance. Mikhail he took without a thought, his hand hovering over him for half a heartbeat before settling warm and firm around his stock. He might be overkill on an easy mission such as this, but his place was beside his commander. It was as it should be. They were loaded into a van and driven to the drop point.

Truly, Mikhail reflected as the slow drip of his final moments ran dry, the entire mission was colossally mismanaged.

It began as planned: the Winter Soldier hunkered down in his sniper's nest, and Mikhail hummed through the first easy shots. But what was meant to be a splinter cell of perhaps twelve men swarmed like a struck hornet's nest, and a veritable army of smugglers mustered arms.

They were warned. Somehow they had been warned, and rather than disperse they had laid bait. The Winter Soldier was in a neighboring warehouse; they had lain in wait, and as soon as he had given away his position, they rose up and dragged him from his hide in the ringing silence between shots. Mikhail gasped as he felt his commander's hands ripped away, and watched, stunned, as the rebels threw him from the catwalk to the warehouse floor below.

He was unharmed, of course. He was the Winter Soldier; he was more than a mere human. He drew his side-arm and started putting them down like the dogs they were.

His advantage could not last. It was supposed to be a long-range mission, not melee, and the Winter Soldier ran out of ammunition in an eyeblink. Soon all he had left were seven rounds: six for Mikhail, trapped on his tripod far above and useless, and one for the Derringer strapped to the Winter Soldier's thigh. The Winter Soldier drew his knives and ducked behind a dusty crate. Mikhail's nerves screamed at him as bullets peppered the worn wood.

The Winter Soldier was silent as he fought for his life. He moved so fast he blurred, dodging bullets and leaving naught but the spray of blood in his wake. His arm caught the fading light, bright against the darkness of the warehouse. He was silent, but his lips were curled in a feral snarl. He was death incarnate. He carved a path for himself up to the catwalk, and Mikhail was exultant when his commander took him up once more.

Six shots, six men dead. It was not enough. A bullet finally caught the Winter Soldier in the gap in his armor at his waist, and he buckled with a thin grunt. Mikhail wailed, horrified; no one heard.

The Winter Soldier found cover behind an abandoned generator. He inspected the wound. It was a bloody red furrow, but Mikhail could already see the skin healing across it. The Winter Soldier left it be and calmly pulled Mikhail down to affix a bayonet. Suddenly the desperation of their situation was clear: they were fighting impossible odds, even for the hero of the Union. Mikhail felt small and stupid, the protective warmth of his confidence shattered with a single grazing gunshot.

Then the Winter Soldier rose to meet his opponents.

Time dilated. Moments lingered in Mikhail's memory, slowing until they appeared as crystalline images: the Winter Soldier crushing a man's throat with his metal arm. The hot bite of a man's blood as Mikhail tore into his abdomen. The shivering retort of his barrel against bone. Pain blistering through him as stress-fractures built up in his stock. 

The final blow, when it came, was one blow too many. The Winter Soldier swung Mikhail into the face of the last man, and with a silent scream, Mikhail's barrel snapped free from his stock. The Winter Soldier stumbled back in shock, but the man was already felled. He stared down at the halves in his hand, at the splintered stock and the bent, bloody barrel. Mikhail stared back up at him. He was done. He was killed.

At least it was in the service of the Motherland, in the hands of the best sniper the world has ever known.

The moment was shattered by the retort of gunfire. Three shots, from the gun of a man not-quite-dead. There was blood down the man's chin, and he was missing his leg at the knee. But his aim was true, and the Winter Soldier fell to his knees. Mikhail had no breath left to scream. 

The concrete was cold against Mikhail's broken barrel. He gazed at the Winter Soldier's beloved face. His eyes were closed. No breath fogged in the chill air. His flesh hand, lax in death, lay a mere scant inches from Mikhail's stock, and in the darkening twilight Mikhail wished it was just a little closer, that he might die beside his commander with the touch of his skin against him.

Everything faded to black.

***

"What took so long? Where is your rifle?"

The Winter Soldier stood before his handler. "There were forty men, not twelve."

"We don't accept excuses," the man snapped. "Report."

"All targets dead and accounted for. Contraband destroyed. Damage sustained to the ribs, right oblique, and head. Damage to gear: three rounds to the chest plate. The Dragunov is destroyed. Replacements needed for the body armor and rifle." His tone was flat, emotionless.

His handler gave an annoyed growl. "Get in the van."

The Winter Soldier went. One of the guards was whistling. Once, a year ago, one of the guards had let the Winter Soldier listen to a variety program on the radio. They had played this song afterwards. The Winter Soldier's step hitched, and his eyes flashed for a moment. Then they went blank once more.

***

END


End file.
